Russian civil rights activists report arrests after Navalny's funeral

Following the funeral of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny in Moscow, several of those in attendance were reportedly arrested, according to civil rights activists.

A man and a woman who had attended Navalny's funeral last Friday as well as separate memorial events were detained on Tuesday, according to OVD-Info, an independent Russian human rights media organization.

A woman from Moscow had reportedly spent the night in police custody.

Police officers are said to have tracked the woman down because a video camera caught her at Navalny's memorial shouting a slogan that translates as "Glory to the heroes."

The chant is meant to express support for Ukraine which has been fending off a Russian invasion for more than two years. Ovd-Info reported that the woman was later fined.

A spokesman for Ovd-Info told the Russian news channel Agentstvo that it was still too early to talk about the start of a wave of arrests.

However, he emphasized that his organization had previously warned that police could track participants after Navalny's funeral using video recordings and new facial recognition technologies.

On the day of the funeral, more than 100 people were detained - although only a few of them in Moscow. Most were in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk.

Furthermore, there had been hundreds of arrests in the days following Navalny's death as people tried to lay flowers at monuments in his memory.

Navalny, who was considered the fiercest critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died on February 16 in a Siberian penal colony under circumstances that have yet to be clarified.

Thousands of people attended the burial in a Moscow suburb last Friday.

To the surprise of many observers, despite a strong police presence, mourners were allowed to proceed, even as they chanted openly anti-Kremlin slogans like "No to War!" and "Russia without Putin!"